Cover Page of The Mayfield Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing
Table of ContentsWriting TimelineIndexHelpCredits

Section 10.4.4.3

General Structure of Entry

An APA reference-list entry has four elements: author(s); date (in parentheses); title; and publication information. Separate the elements with a period and a single space. In some cases, such as online materials and articles in an edited book, a fifth element is included.

  1. Author or authors: List all authors, regardless of the number, in the order in which they are listed on the title page of the document. List all authors by last name, a comma and a space, first initial, and if included, middle initial, placing an ampersand (&) before the name of the last author. Separate initials with a period followed by a space. If a work produced by an organization lists no individual author, give the full name of the organization as author. If no author or organization is listed, move the title of the work into the author position.

  2. Date format: The year of the entry always follows one space after the period concluding the author element. It is enclosed in parentheses and is followed by a period and a space. If two or more works by the same author were published in the same year, arrange them alphabetically by title and attach to the year of each work a lowercase letter, starting with a.

    3. In some cases, the month or the month and day are included as part of the date; then the year is followed by a comma, a space and the month (spelled out completely), and, sometimes, the day in arabic numerals.

  3. Title: Give the full name of the work, including subtitles, which are separated from the title by a colon and a single space. Capitalize only the first word of the title, the first word after a colon, and all proper nouns. If the source is not a book or an article, include a description of the source's form (for example, Brochure, Specifications, Map) in brackets immediately following the title but before the period.

  4. Publication information--page numbers: If giving a range, write out the second number in full: 222-227. Use the abbreviations p. and pp. only for articles in books and newspapers and when listing discontinuous pages: pp. 44-49, 102-122.

Reference Link Text
## APA Entry General Structure ##
Reference Link Text

[ Home | Table of Contents | Writing Timeline | Index | Help | Credits]